A trigger evaluates incoming events and determines whether to initiate a work item or append one or more events to existing work items.
Automatic triggers respond to matching events based on trigger rules defined by the Process Author.
Manual triggers require human intervention to initiate a work item. For more information about manually triggering processes, see Manually Triggering a Process.
Workflow Automation can prevent a large number of unnecessary work items by blocking the following types of events:
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Repetitive events |
A data source may repeatedly send identical events during the course of an outage but the first notice is usually sufficient. |
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Symptomatic events |
One failure may have downstream impacts, each of which generates a symptomatic event. Fix the root cause and many of these events go away. |
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False warnings |
Performance management systems often have static and inexact thresholds that lead to a large number of warnings when there is no real problem. |
Process Authors can configure triggers to prevent new work items by blocking events. For example, after an event matches the conditions to generate the work item, the trigger blocks subsequent matching events.
A trigger blocks matching events only while the work item is running. Once the work item is complete, new matching events initiate a new work item.
Process Authors can also define work item-level blocks when designing a workflow. A work item block terminates a running work item if it meets pre-defined conditions. For example, a conditional connector can take the workflow to an End of Workflow activity.
For more information about related events, see Viewing a Work Item’s Related Events.
Process Authors can configure triggers to append events to an existing work item. For example, after an event matches the conditions to generate the work item, the trigger appends subsequent matching events to the work item as related events.
A trigger appends matching events to a work item only while the work item is running. When the work item is complete or the trigger’s time window expires, new matching events initiate a new work item.
A single event can trigger or be appended to multiple work items.
For more information about related events, see Viewing a Work Item’s Related Events.